The Melting Pot, a fondue chain restaurant that’s housed in The Marketplace mall, offers a communal experience in which diners dip bite-size pieces of food into shared pots of hot liquid. It’s a fun concept, but sometimes frustrating in reality.

We called in advance and were encouraged to make a reservation, even on a weeknight. We were promptly seated in the softly lit dining room, which was divided into high-backed booths of varying sizes. Each table had at least one flat-top burner to heat a fondue pot; our group of four was seated at one of the larger booths, which had two burners.

The restaurant’s pricing is unusual in that each course is priced per person, and the amount of fondue is scaled to the number of people ordering. Parties with lighter appetites can order fewer servings than the number of actual diners. One option is a “four-course experience,” which includes cheese fondue, salad, entrée and chocolate fondue, for $29.95 to $43.95 per person.

We started with two cheese fondues, which our waiter prepared at our table. We relished their silky melted goodness. They were served with bread cubes, apples, chips and veggies. We preferred the garlicky spinach artichoke fondue; the cheddar fondue had strong notes of lager beer and would have gone better with chewy hot pretzels.

Salads were welcome freshness after the decadent beginning to our meal. The house salad had lettuces, cheese, tomatoes, croutons and egg slices and was served with a sweet, mustardy dressing. A strawberry almond salad, from a specials menu, was very sweet, because it had a fruity vinaigrette on top of the strawberries.

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For the entrée course, you are served uncooked food, which you cook by either boiling in a seasoned liquid or frying in oil. When ordering, you decide on your ingredients as well as your cooking methods, which are limited to the number of burners on your table. We each chose a variety of dippers, and cooking in a vegetable court bouillon as well as “bourguignonne,” or hot oil.

About a dozen bites each, the entrees were attractively plated, and came with a bowl of par-cooked veggies to share. We were given instructions on cooking times, as well as how to avoid cross-contaminating raw proteins with cooked. We were presented with five dipping sauces, plus two batters for frying.

We found this course more frustrating than fun. We had a hard time getting the proteins properly cooked in both of the liquids, even when we set timers on our cellphones to the suggested times.

The court bouillon had a strong salty/peppery flavor, and everything cooked in it took on that flavor. We had some success with unseasoned seafood and filled pastas in the broth.

With the hot oil, we found that the foods coated in thick batters became overly brown before the insides were properly cooked. Frying without batter made the oil splatter; in fact, one splatter hit my skin and left a burn.

The highlight of the evening was dessert — dark chocolate and “flaming turtle” fondues, served with chunks of brownies, red velvet cake, crispy rice treats, and banana slices, strawberries and marshmallows.

The rice treats were our favorite: The heat of the chocolate softened the marshmallow in the treats and turned it into crunchy, chewy goodness.

Splitting two servings of the chocolate fondues was just enough for the four of us.

We lingered over our meals for close to three hours. We agreed that we enjoyed our evening, but in the future we’d make a meal of cheese fondue, a salad and chocolate fondue and skip the entrées altogether.